tv David Mc Cormick Superpower in Peril CSPAN April 30, 2023 8:00am-8:55am EDT
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good afternoon everyone i'm robert doar and i'm very glad to welcome you all to super power in peril. a conversation with david mccormick this event is part of a ise edward and helen hintz book forum series where we bring in the authors of new and books and we are very grateful to ed and helen for their generous for this mission which makes talks like these possible. now david mccormick is the author along with james cunningham of super power in peril, a battle plan to renew america, which was recently published by center street press. david is the former ceo of bridgewater associates, the world's largest hedge fund. he served in the george w bush administration as the of treasury for international and under secretary of commerce for industry and security. a graduate of west point. he served in the united states army and saw combat during the gulf war and he also was a candidate for, the united states
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senate, in last year's senate race in pennsylvania. i'm very proud to welcome david here to air to discuss his book and proposals to restore security, opportunity and purpose to america. first, david, i will discuss the book and then we'll have plenty of time for audience questions and our online viewers may submit their questions to daniel dot bring at air dot org or on twitter with the hashtag hashtag superpower in peril. david, thank you for being with us. we really appreciate your being here. and i wanted to start out. there's a lot in the book about your point. you a west point cadet and you graduated west point and you served in the army. and there's a lot in about the army. and i wanted you to give us a sense of of why you wanted to talk to that so much. and also the state of the united states army today. first of all, robert, thanks so much for having me. it's an honor to be here. and thank you all for for coming. get the was inspired by a belief
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that the country was headed in the wrong direction long before i decided to run for the senate. and and to your question, meaning our super power really is in peril. and and certainly my in the military in my time at west point shaped that because i grew up in rural pennsylvania in a town called bloomsburg. played sports. i wasn't the best student, but sports got me into west point. and my family had had anybody in, you know, in my immediate family that gone to the military. and when i got accepted my whole town's like a big deal. nobody gone to one of the academies for a decade. so so the idea of going which way wasn't that excited about sort of became a fait accompli. and when i went there, it opened my eyes to the world. and in many ways, west point is all that's great about america in the sense that it the whole thing is designed around, duty, honor, country, and it it it highlights the responsibility that we all have to keep america the exceptional nation that it is. the other great thing about west
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and particularly the army is it's this melting pot. so i describe in the book when i left west point, i went to the 82nd airborne division, and my first assignment was as a platoon leader. and, you know, you're this 22 year old kid. you're responsible for all these soldiers. and there was a, you know, a white kid from rural alabama. and there is a black kid from inner city newark. and there's a platoon sergeant who's from puerto rico, who's 35. he's seemed ancient to me at the time, 35. and he was the guy designing to keep the new lieutenant from making a mistake and getting in trouble. and in all my time in the military, i never remember having a political conversation i couldn't identify who was a republican, who was democrat. we were we were brought together by a common purpose to serve nation, to protect one another, and to be part of something bigger than ourselves. and that's sentiment that i'm
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hoping to capture in the book, which, you know, america's exceptional, yet america is in decline, and decline is not inevitable as a as a famous aei. charles krauthammer said, but it's not it's neither is renewal or new is not inevitable either. it depends on what we do and this is the what we we should do book. i want to come back to the american decline versus america on the rise in a minute but i want to stay on on military affairs. you served in the first gulf war. you write in the book that the 911 wars you found in your campaign for senate in pennsylvania in you you saw and you've experienced and you watched a kind of disconnect sent with the use of american overseas and and i wondered what what your feeling is about that and especially now that failure in the 911 wars is being used as an excuse to do too much in ukraine. how do you see that discussion?
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well, i think the you know, when when 911 happened, i remember it like it was yesterday. and in the time followed, i was someone who was a very advocate of of taking the fight to the terrorist initially in afghanistan and even in iraq when i thought that weapons of mass destruction were imminent as a as i think the intelligence services said and i think the president thought at the time and i wrote a piece at the time, which which i could dig up, which was let's roll against saddam hussein. so i was an advocate. mm hmm. and and you fast forward it and you see 20 years later, there was an enormous expenditure of lives, resource this focus. and i think it's it should teach us humility about the possibilities mission creep and not having a steady north star on where we're headed and and the responsibility to make sure that our our precious people and our precious treasure is is
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carefully expended. so i think the wrong lesson from this would be that we shouldn't be confident in using leadership and american force to protect u.s. interests abroad. that would be the wrong lesson, but the right lesson is one of humility and care, because the precious use of military men and women and resources comes at a cost. it comes at a cost in confidence in the people. and so, you know, when i'm going to these small towns in pennsylvania those are the folks that pay disproportionately. when we go to war it's not mostly people in this part of the country. it's not mostly people in wealthy neighborhoods is people in these rural communities. that's where the military draws mostly from. and they're they paid the. and so we need to recognize is that as we move forward strongly in support of american interests abroad but with with humility and care. so would say to that because you describe beautifully the interactions mothers of of soldiers who lost their lives in
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iraq. would you would you say to them if they were here you're right, if have some regrets about what happened? obviously you're heartbroken. but but don't let that prevent you supporting america's support for ukraine, for instance. yeah. so in the case of. yes, short answer. but in the case of ukraine, i think it's it's a it's a really important case study. it's one that we situation. it's one that we we should debate. but i think it's you. ukraine is of great interest to the united states because if putin's aggression is left unchecked, that will ultimately not reinforce his aggressive in europe, which would be inherently destabilizing america's interest. i think it says a very a very dangerous signal to china. so i'm not one who believes that if we take focus off of russia and put it on china, that that will enable us to better combat. and i think it's the opposite. i think a loss by ukraine and
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china will be a win with russia rather be a win for not only russia but china. so i think i think that u.s. leadership is very important. ukraine. however, i also think that those who counsel that we should be careful to let american troops get pulled in. those who who worry about our resources being used in corrupt manners only need to look at bagram air force base to know that if we're not careful, our investments so our invest, we need to have accountability and prudence. but but that shouldn't stand, in the way of strength and clarity of purpose and mission. so one of the thing is very clear in the book and and in the way that you conducted your was that you understood the tensions and were faced with the tensions that are happening in the republican party on america's role in the world industrial policy, free market sort of principles and entitlements. so let's tip let's go to the next one, which is sort of the use of of government policy to
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to affect the economy. where do you where did you come out after your experience in the campaign and you're doing the research for this book on, you know, sort of trumpian industrial policy versus milton friedman's free market? well, if you know the thing i had to reconcile when i was writing the book and also in the campaign is i've been a a strong. so what did that mean to me? that meant that our country was conceived with idea that individual liberty and freedom is the defining principle and that government is in support of that purpose, that a small government is better than a big government, that markets and and free market principles should be the underlying drivers of our economy, that america's in the world americans is exceptional. its role in the world is is one that requires leadership in support of that exceptionalism. so that's the framework which i come from. but then i go to rural pennsylvania and it was only because of that, but because of the evidence and that those
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principles working for everybody. in other, you know, the notion of free and and and what that meant for globalization and what that meant for those communities or the idea that we should have hands off technology because the market markets will drive innovation that will, in essence, put the united states the top of the heap. from a technology perspective. that's not a reality. that's not a reality. if you go to those small towns, the last 20 years have not been good for them. they've been bad for them. while everybody had assets, got a lot richer. don't have to be smarter. you just had a basket. so you got a lot richer. the people that did have assets stayed the same and got relatively poorer. real incomes stayed flat for for 20 years. the open and fed now has destroyed those communities. so. so they're upset. they're globalization gutted. many of those communities they don't think. and china looms large in their minds. so they don't think been working so well for them.
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so that's one fact that you have to reconcile. wait a second. we've had that or that or orthodoxy. it hasn't worked. the second one is that china is winning in the fight for technology. so there was a wall street article a couple of weeks ago. many of you may have seen it. 37 of 44 technologies identified by this australian think tank. china is in the lead. if you go to our own assessment in our own intel community or even public documents in 2017 by the us trade representative, ten of the 20 key technologies for economic well-being but also for national security. china is in the lead, so china is winning in this fight for technology. and if you believe we're at a moment where the confluence of economics, technology and national security are together, then we've got to get working because we're going to lose a very point of leadership. those were the facts they had to reconcile and ultimately, i try to deal with that in the book
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with how we should deal with china, a holistic strategy should strategically decouple in a number of key industries and bring those industries home. i advocate and think president trump was right on the notion of reciprocity as a general principle, particularly as it relates to china. i believe we have to have a much more thoughtful policy on technology leadership. i try to say in the book that we can't have a chinese tech, techno, authoritarian model and we can't have traditional policy as the progressive left would present. i think we need a policy which is essentially using government incentives to draw private sector into those technological areas where we have to win or america's role in the world be will be, will be challenged. so you point to of them, but i go through this argument for the kind of technology we should have. and then i say, what would milton friedman say? because that milton, i'm sure, would would not be in favor of
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what i'm recommending. but then i turn the argument around. i said, well, what would milton friedman say to what i'm saying? because the fact of the matter is we have had a laissez faire to some these key technologies. and the reality in semiconductors should scare all of us because 90% of the most important tech microchips in the world are manufactured 90 miles from mainland china. china has built 32 fabs in the next decade. we've we are building one now based on the chips act. so we have lost in a great book, which i know you've highlighted the chip the chips book. we have lost the war on microchips, which is a foundational for our economy and our national security. we're going to lose continue to lose unless. we rethink how we should pursue technological leadership. so another area where, the sort of changing political situation has influenced people in a i, for instance, and others is
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trade and where do you come down on tariffs and protectionism? not china generally a much more leaning towards a free trade orientation? i do think the principle of reciprocity, i mean the evolution of is i think is a good lesson in the sense that the principle that if we just open our markets and ultimately it's going to be in the best interest of the other side open their markets and and through time principle and example will be beneficial to everybody that that fell on its head in a case with china. so i've lost my intellectual purity on that and i think that china the china case should worry a bit. at the same time, i'm that would embrace the power of markets the power of opening market to others the power of negotiated
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and free trade agreements that give us market access. so i think that free trade should be a critical part of driving our economy but i think it shouldn't be done with such purity that we lose sight. the fact that we've gotten a raw deal, particularly in the case of china. so you you had this you've had this amazing career both in the private and in the public sector. and now you've run for senate in pennsylvania. one aspect of your career that you write and is interesting is your experience with ray dalio and and, and you make a reference his your disagreement with about his attitude toward. i happened to have read his his powerpoint presentation which he says is a book on china and i just wanted to know, could you just give us the deal on that? what the heck what the heck is why? there's two pieces of that bridgewater was a big part of my life. i spent 12 years at bridgewater and there's a couple of parts of the book that that i really of
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that time that i really had. but one was that i came and for the first year and a half, i was sort of my way around bridgewater and then i became the co-ceo and then about a year and a half later, ray me from that job, very poor signs of some tension and very publicly. and that was you know, that's on the front page of the wall street journal. this was not a pleasant moment. and i had young kids and we had just moved them from from washington and and so i said, i'm going to stick with it for another year or two, too. so i get my personal situation, then i'll figure out what's next. and i stayed and it started to stick and things started to go well. and i became again, i don't know, four years later or something of that. and then was ceo for the last six years before, i jumped into the, into the senate. so bridgewater's, a very unique place. i wouldn't have traded that experience for the world. and it's a global macro investment firm. and so deep understanding of the world is a really important part
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of it. and and we serve we served, you know, the biggest investors in the world. and they want access markets around the world. so they wanted to diversify their portfolios, including in china. and so had an investment strategy. ultimately, i think while i was there, like 2% of our assets were in china. but we had $160 billion, 2 to 2% is not an insignificant amount was in china and and the tension was, you know, 30% of most of your homes have china based products in them. so the intent, you know, the integration of the economies is a reality for everybody most investment firms in china. so and i didn't have a dispute on that. i was the ceo. so whatever we did, i'm responsible for. but our dispute or i disagree it was about the direction of china. yeah and this diverge it's which which i had really calling out since 2005 when i was in the government i had written articles on it. i had described the technology, thievery and all that, but it
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became much more acute in 2014 with the rise of president. and so i started writing articles as in 2017, 1818, saying, this is a growing concern and we have to take a new approach in america to to making sure we maintain our leadership. and that was the basis for the book and had a a much more benign view of the risk with china and and some things in an interview and so we had a disagreement on that, which ultimately we talked about in a company meeting with a thousand people, which course then came into the media. so that's a that was the dispute. okay but but the point i, i want to be clearer. his benign view of china is troubling to you. yeah, we disagreed on that. i think poses an existential risk in economic terms and national security terms. i think it's a risk that has to be dealt with with a comprehensive whole of nation strategy. i think we can't do piecemeal
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things. i think we have to think about this in a in a in a sophisticated way, given the it's the largest, the second largest economy in the world, given the risk associated with it. and that's what i try to lay out in the book, is a whole of nation strategy dealing with it. one of the things i find interesting about the book is, is your attitude toward and what you write about the united states you call the superpower in peril. and yet there's a tremendous amount of love for america in the book and a tremendous amount of confidence in america for the book. and this is an issue for, people in what i do and sort of right of center think tanks, a lot of people on the right of center that have given up on america. the former president has a tendency to use rhetoric that indicates a, you know, a deep with the country. how do you balance the pair all with your love for the country? are we a bad country or what's going on? what what's your what's your view of the united states you know, you will you learn the
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book is it's as you say the cover is very stark and i believe that we are at unique inflection point and is also very optimistic. as you say. and the reason is optimistic is because this is the american we get to the edge of the cliff. we pull ourselves back. you know, we get these moments of where all looks lost and we and we come back. i just read a grant biography and and you see what unbelievable polarization, consternation there was during the civil and has happened in my lifetime. but in your lifetime, which i lived through this in the late seventies. so 1979, i can remember it like it was yesterday. i was 14, 14 or 15. we had double digit inflation, stagflation. we were in recession. we had odd days and even days for getting gas. remember, opec had us in a headlock. and i remember my had the country squire who remembers country squire was like a station wagon about a half a block long with wood on the
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side. and we would wait in the gas line. and there was desert where we. jimmy carter sent our troops into iran to try to rescue our hostages. and 80% of americans thought the country was heading the wrong direction. go to today. right? we are we're we're economic decline where necessary to climb spiritually. i think we're in decline. i'm happy to talk about that. people are losing faith in america's exceptionalism. in fact, we're teaching that in our schools that america is not exceptional. we'll get to the education, i'm sure. so if you don't believes america, america's exceptional, then you don't believe you've got to do everything you can to preserve it. but to go back to 1979, four years later, i was at west point and i'd be on that beautiful looking down on the hudson river, magnificent mountains. and america was back four years later. it's inflation was in check. the economy was growing. we were in the midst of a military buildup which would end the cold war. six years later, you could feel the confidence in the air and
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the tagline for the reagan campaign was morning in america. and it was. and the difference was leadership. leadership makes all the difference. and i'm not suggesting that the policies that ronald reagan put in place are the exact policies of today, although some of them are applicable. but the leadership to see the future stay the course, work through the disagreement, the polarization and execute on a plan is what give people confidence and what brought america back into what followed were many decades of prosperity. so that's why i'm optimistic about it. but it depends on what we do. as i say in the book, declines not inevitable. it neither is renewal. it depends what we do. and so i'm hoping this is a in a very humble way i'm saying this i'm hoping that an idea of a forward vision for renewing the country what people start talking about in 2024 and beyond. yeah, too. but i just want to say i'm 78. those were bad years. the statistics you cited are frankly much worse than they are
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now. the person that the country turned to had a sunny, positive, forward looking. attitude. but the politics of today, when maybe the economics aren't as bad as they were then, are leading to a very dark kind of negative attitude, or at least at least some in the former president. i just. are you are you saying that's not the right course? yeah, i'm saying absolutely that's not the right course. i mean, i think as a you know, as a conservative, someone who just ran for office, you know, getting that balance rate's important. but i think very important is it is a conservative to point out where the policies, the opposition are going in the right direction. i don't think we can give president biden or anybody a free pass on the things that, you know, the enormous splurge and spending, for example, that we've seen over the last two years. that doesn't mean that we haven't had republicans dancing spending to, but the last tuesday. so i think we have to hold the opposition. but i think we mostly have to be looking forward and the people that i met on the campaign trail
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in pennsylvania, they want to talk about how are you going to fix inflation, what are you going to do about fentanyl? like how are we going to get great middle class jobs? so i think we need that both a positive vision for to take the country in and the sunny optimism that goes with it. and this is this is sort of leadership one on one. you can't be falsely optimistic, but have to be able to paint a vision of a better world. and, in fact, that's the whole proposition of the american dream, is that if you work hard, you know, you're going to have a better opportunity than than than parents did. that's that's that's what we that's what we're betting on. so you mentioned education. and i want to give you an opportunity to talk about that, because it's a big part of the book, both k-through-12 and also adult skills development, education. so just what what is the key there? and do you think have you seen signs of progress or hope? and there's a sense among people in the education reform network that posco david parents saw what was really going on in their schools. and they've now to change it and demand more choice, more
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options. what how do you see that? i see it that way. in other words, i think covid maybe one of the good things that could come out of covid is the degree to which parents got much more engaged in the education of the kids. they looked over the zoom over the shoulder and zoom. they saw history that was being taught or not being taught. they saw even how issues around sexual sexualization and gender were being introduced into. the classroom and you know, for elementary school kids, the role teachers were playing, they saw the quality of their kids education. and i saw this over and over again where on the campaign trail people are saying, hey, i'm running for school board. i'm doing this like this education thing. parents are in it. and so i think that's a very positive. the other sign i think is you see governors like governor santos, governor huckabee making education. governor youngkin obviously making education at the forefront of their agenda. and listen, you get to the core of this. i don't think we're to solve this problem with
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incrementalism, which is what i try to say in the book. but i think we maybe at the where school choice actually could be at a tipping point. and the arguments are profound. i think the arguments for conservatives is for the benefit of choice advantages all all kids and all parents but it particularly advantages minority kids and blue collar that don't have the wherewithal, have other options. and so is a great way bring a quality of opportunity to a much broader group of people and obviously to the teachers unions have a monopoly on on our education system today i cite some the statistics around the growth in spending in education and how much of that spending is to teachers or kids versus how much it's going to overhead an administration in the military we have to call that a tooth to tail problem, which we got a lot more a lot more tail versus tooth. that's what happens when you
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have a monopoly. that's what happens when you don't competition. and so i think i think it is something structural and you you know, i go pretty hard at this in the book i'm pretty unforgiving. but i'm not anti teacher my mom and dad are both teachers. i mean, the people that changed my life was a teacher when i was in high school and a professor college. so i have enormous respect for the power of great teaching. i think our are locked in a system where they can't be excellent and our students are locked in a system where they can't get great educations. we got to fix it. so there is a lot in the book about the campaign and what you learned on the campaign. and so i want to talk a little bit about that and then we'll open up for questions from the audience. so, you know, pretty big swing state trump endorsement issue contested primary. you traveled the state, had the money you needed. what did you in the campaign and what would you have done differently and what what what
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what happened? well, pennsylvania's like a microcosm of the country in many ways. it's a purple you know, we have rural areas which are very very conservative. if you're from a republican primary perspective. so i grew up in those rural areas. so the fact that i grew up there, i had a family farm, you know, served in the military. that was all good, good anchoring. but we also have huge suburbs particular around philadelphia, where 40% of the voters are in these collar counties around philadelphia. and it's a purple state. you need to run a primary and also run a general election. just as a practical matter that can that can attract independents and conservative democrats. that's the coalition you need to build. and so, you know, the thing you have to do is you have to run a race that can appeal to the base, the conservative base, which which are many of those are are president trump supporters. they're also movement conservatives that are very much around changing the direction. you also have be able to run a
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race that attracts the moderate republicans or more moderate republicans. we knew from the beginning that that we didn't think we had to have president trump's endorsement to win. i had hoped that president trump was on the sidelines. but we thought if he if he was negative on me, came after me, that that would be be harder to win, which is was ultimately what happened. but we also had to appeal to those, you know, those independents. and then you have to do that in a way where you wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and say, i'm doing this for a reason. believe in what i'm saying. this is a value campaign. so that's what that's what we tried to do. and it's tough. you know, it's it's a little bit people ask me what's like to run for office these days? you know, i had a pretty good job as the ceo bridgewater. i quit that job to jump into ring. and it's like that movie gladiator. if you've ever seen that movie with crowe and you're standing in the middle of, the arena, and there's all people cheering that some are for you, some are throwing cans. and and then you had the and you're by yourself. and all of a sudden the trap
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door comes up and there's a tiger. okay, then you kill the and the next thing you know, the gate opens and a chariot comes out, you know, and and so it is tough. it is really tough. but but necessary because. if if if people who are aren't able if we don't have able people running and putting themselves in the arena, then then we're not going to have a great a great country and a great government. and the only final thing i'd say is, despite all the challenges, we loved it like we felt to do it. we felt, i believe i had the blessings of america. i live the american dream never would have dreamed in my wildest moments that my in life would have turned out the way it did. i feel eternally grateful and, you know, when we talked to our kids about it, they were kind of universally opposed because they didn't want to be drawn into this. they didn't you know, they didn't the idea of being in the public eye, which which we try to keep them out of. but when i ask the question, well, if not us, then who? i mean, if not the people that are most benefit benefited by
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that, who then there's not good answers. so you know, it was a great experience, sadly, it didn't quite end the way we had hoped so. but i just you tell the story in the book, and i have to ask you, because i think our audience would be interested in is why did me endorse you? well, you know, president trump had endorsed another candidate who had withdrawn. so coming into the race, it wasn't clear to me he needed to endorse. and he had a very strong relationship. mehmet oz, who was my opponent in the primary, one of my opponents in the primary. so i had heard six or eight weeks out that he was going to endorse us. so i this is the first chapter of the book i flew down tomorrow. i called ask if i could an appointment i flew tomorrow lot going to ask him to just stay of it stay on the sidelines let us play my campaign. i was running on a lot of the trump policies that i agreed. still agree with him there in the book and and the president was unhappy because i had said after january six that i'd asked
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a question on tv and i'd said i thought president trump it contributed to the polarization in the country. but then he said to me, you can't win unless you say the 2020 was stolen. 2010 election was stolen. and i said, mr. president, be able to say that. and and i left and i was winning probably by eight points or something like that at the time and and president trump came out to remember that was a couple of days later and i was still winning. and then came to pennsylvania about ten days before the election and went at me pretty hard. and that, you know, that certainly had some effect, despite the fact that his wife or your wife worked for him. you know, she had been a loyal member. a couple things as a couple of things about it. and i had the big picture when you lose by 900 votes, there's 1.4 million, right? undervotes. yeah. there's many things you could have done win. and so i'm responsible for that. like, i don't blame anybody. i could have won this. and then i just fell a little bit short. so that's first. the second thing, you know, politics a little bit like plea
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boxing at west point. so you have to plea boxing your first year. it's a requirement and you walk into the class and there was this guy when i was there named herb crayton, who had been there for like 40 years, is knows flat and you know he was an old boxing coach and he was kind of like mickey and rocky and he said, you know, you can't win unless. you're willing to get punched in the face. and that's you got to be in there and be willing to get punched in the face. so i took i took a few punches in the face. but but was glad i did it. and, you know, bush, i wouldn't have fallen short. but that's that's the way the game is played. last question. my pennsylvania. but because it is in the book and your knowledge of pennsylvania and your sense of it, how did how did senator fetterman win or pennsylvania know? it cuts lots of different ways. but the the most important thing, i think, is that it's very people feel very connected to pennsylvanians. and i think, you know, the question that was raised for me
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was, i you know, i'm 57, i grew up in pennsylvania. i went to west point. i went to military. i came back to pittsburgh. i worked in pittsburgh, ran across i created a company. i owned a farm. i paid taxes. you know, i some my family lives there. i guess i'm pretty good roots. i'm pretty pretty deep pennsylvania. and people would say where you been? you know, like they want to know you're with them at the county fair. and so i think that was the challenge that memories had, which was it's just it was just hard to make a compelling he didn't have any of those in pennsylvania. he didn't have anything like that. and and so that that explains a lot, i think, because people want to know that the person that they're voting for kind of gets it. and part of getting is understanding that, you know, you didn't commit yesterday. okay. all right. let's open it up for questions from the audience. we have one right here, right in the front.
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can you bring the microphone down, wait for the mic? and we're your question. this is a question. i'm peter song from capital intel for mr. mccormick. how you are a west point grad became a ceo of the largest hedge fund in the world. he served in treasury under bush. and you know, come from humble beginnings from pennsylvania. what can happen like a morning in america, republican, you know, mainstream. this is the same problem with the question. my question is, what could you've done different to win in your election? what to be done so mainstream, moderate candidates can win elections rather than the social, unreal social media world? yeah. yeah. well, you know, i think part of it is so i i think what is a mainstream candidate? i mean, i, you know, depending who you talk to, they think i'm a crazy conservative or they think i'm too moderate.
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so, you know, conservative ism today is a mix. economic conservatives, national security conservatives. you have this popular growing populist pulse in the party. i try to hit that head on in the book super powered parallel. i think i think we need to really look at what happened in 2016 as republicans and embrace the fact that our traditional policies missed a huge part of the population. i, i believe as a guy who grew up in rural pennsylvania and saw it, i believe it as guy who was on the campaign trail. and i believe it is a guy who looks at the numbers. so so what i think is required is an acknowledgment that, hey, we've got some core principles as conservative as that, we need to stay strong about. and there's also things our current conservative ideology hasn't addressed, and we need to embrace that. and and so i've tried to do that in the book. i think the answer is ideas. the answer is looking forward.
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the answer is leaders who can win primaries among but also in general elections. and that that's that's the hope that this is trying to lay out their let's see what we got here right. two glasses right there, nick. nick. but not nick. thank you very much. yeah, great perspective, david. so my question name's pyotr. i'm from the world bank, but i also host the global gambit podcast. so my question is something i asked frances fukuyama when i had him on, because he sees china a little bit differently to some other people near another nonresident fellow at the chicago council relations talks about engaging china. so my question simply for you is how do you see china? do you see them genuinely wanting to exist in a balance? multipolarity or do you actually see them wanting to ups up the united states? and if that's the case, how do you think that the united states, allies and partners should effectively respond or if
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not respond, at least prevent or handicap? thank you? i think the the last. two decades has been has essentially been a coexist strategy where we have we have assumed benign intentionality for the most part. and as a consequence factually, we're behind. and from a leadership standpoint in technology, we're threatened in the south china sea by a very significant military capability, a techno authoritarian model, pursuing relationships and alliances abroad. that's challenging us leadership. and we have a leader in president xi who is expounded very intentionally and very openly on a strategy that is to assert china's role in the world and either explicitly or implicitly at the expense of american leadership. so i think the facts of where we
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are are relatively clear and think the policy community is has just over the last three or four years that both both sides of the political spectrum have come together with a more clear sense of the risk posed by china. so so that's that's how i see it. that doesn't mean we have no engagement with china. that doesn't mean that we don't need to be careful about creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. but i think all the evidence would suggest that we have a very strong adversary with a plan to displace america and at the expense of us interest. and we no plan for the most part to counter that. and so this book is a plan and. the plan i won't go into too elaborately, but it really has two pieces. one pieces go to the gym at home like we to do some muscle building around education, our own technology policy, a data strategy, big data is the key to innovation in the future. need to have a much more holistic view of that, and we need to confront china by
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strategic decoupling of key industries, by by making changes to outbound investment policy to stop direct investment in tech technologies that are going to help the chinese. we need to hold china accountable often for things like covid, where we still haven't gotten to the bottom of of where where the virus came from because china has cooperated. and we need to have alliances with australia, japan, many others, along these different dimensions of technology, data military capability, intel to make sure that we're taking advantage of that. and if you need any more evidence, just look at the last week. yeah. what's happened with china brokering the iran saudi deal and and also in in russia with putin supporting the ukraine. so i think the evidence is clear. and when i hear people make the argument with we just get a little more understanding think there's been probably a little too much understanding and a little too little skepticism. well, don't you think that she showing up and appearing with
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putin in the way he did? i mean, that's a pretty dramatic of it's in his his treachery and i mean, doesn't that make the well whoever if they're still left china apologists i mean they're completely lost. i mean it seems indisputable to me. yeah, but but yet i there's a there's a there's still still there. yeah, there is. and there's a difference between being provocative in such a way that you're creating a higher likelihood of conflict and being strong and decisive that ultimately deters aggression. so people get mixed up. it's not you know, if you think about a bar fight, it's not the guy at the bar that's talking loud and, you know, raising his arms around the have to worry about. it's the quiet one in the corner that's going to be tough. you push him in the wrong direction. we need to be the quiet in the corner that everybody knows. you speak. you mean what you say?
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if you act, you've got a lot of power behind you right now. the question, vince, bring the mic to events, please. thank you. i'm vince smith and i'm the director asu's agricultural policy program. and i want to i want come back and ask you to be very specific in the following context. about 40 years ago, the us was the leader in agricultural r&d through public and private investments. but in that sector, public investment is important because. farms are small today. china, a dollar 44, an for every dollar that the u.s. spends in terms of public agricultural research and related research. what would you do to rectify that sort of massive in commitment to future investment and productivity within the u.s.
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to be competitive and globally competitive and retain in that particular as well as in other areas? are you talking about basic research bases, a basic r&d primarily? well, in the agricultural sector, you've got to realize if you're talking about on farm, you're not talking about entities that can fund themselves their own private investment. yeah, i think i understand the question. so i mean, there's two separate things going in for the lack of just to trade, to try to create some clarity. there's basic r&d and then there's more applied, applied investment in development. at least that's the way i've thought about in basic r&d. you probably know this well, we're about half of what we were in 1950 as a percentage of gdp. so and that's at times when other other countries doubling down that. so i think i say in the book should we should be much more forward leaning on basic r&d and that's across the whole gamut of everything from energy policy to
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agriculture policy, the kinds of things that are very hard for private enterprise to make, the investments that may not pay or may not pay off for decades. then the second thing i'm saying and it's primarily in the national security realm is that the government should play a much more proactive role at creating incentives to draw private sector investments in. these technologies that have such huge. such as zero sum dynamics that if we lose our leadership position, you know, we're in peril. a good example that's 5g or semiconductors where where if the if the had one its strategy sort of having pervasive 5g from china across the developed world and developing world that would have been a huge step back for us from a national security perspective the same with semiconductors. so i'm arguing for and not for everything. so i'm probably not arguing for agriculture, although i'd like to hear more about it. i'm arguing for those technologies that we identify as
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critical to our national security. okay. we have a question way in the back. then i go to follow up explanatory and i'm a part of cnn. i have two questions for you. one, do you plan to run for senate again in 2024? and as you also look at the presidential race, would do you support trump and his bid or would support governor desantis? you had nice things to say about him during this panel. what are you thinking about for potentially backing a presidential? well, i mean, i should start with the fact that my wife has been saying it's time to get a job so i'm getting i'm getting pressure on this front. i haven't decided yet on 20, 24. i'm thinking about it, obviously. and the reason i mean, if you run for office, you do it because you think you have something to contribute. you think you're, you know, you think it's a moment where you might be able to serve. and if you lose, it doesn't, the motivation doesn't necessarily go away.
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so i certainly have a motivation to try to find ways to serve. and maybe it's 20, 24. i haven't i haven't decided that we're thinking about it, praying about it, and we'll figure that out later on down the road. i'm a 20, 24 lesson. i think this will be a great opportunity for debate through the primary of the direction to take the country and so i don't have any person that i've supported i'm hoping we have a really rigorous debate. i hope it'll be focused the future. i hope that'll be focused on ideas that can that can save the country, renew the country. and i think that would be good for the republican party and good for the country. yes. right here in the front. very last question and yes, i was there. question, what do you make of russian what we have a question from one of our remote viewers. okay. so the question is, what can we actually to decouple from china? and the author was specifically about on shoring, shoring, reshoring, segmented chains,
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these sorts of policy tools to reduce the dependance on the chinese supply chain. yeah, i think i think when you talk about strategic decoupling, you have to be very purposeful because if you start with everything then it's very hard, it's overwhelming in terms of how you systematically go through this. but the way i would start with this, i say almost concentric circles. if you think about concentric circles, the first concentric circle would be those things that we can't imagine that we would want to have the hands of another country or most certainly china. so semiconductors is a good example of that artificial intelligence. there's a number of quantum science, those sorts of things where you say those are critical to our future economic vitality, our productivity, our national security. and and in each of those and you would have further concentric circles as, you go in that core concentric circle. i think we mostly want to have that capability at home, but we may want have it within the realm of our most trusted
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allies, like the five countries and so forth. and, you know, prior to decide to run for office i, i chaired a a task force with maryland, houston to look with, for the reagan reagan institute to look at key industries for advanced manufacturing to bring home. and we've got we've got gaps so to to reassure we have a skilled worker problem which is one of the reasons i try to hit that. so hard in the book. we've got a capital problem there's we're competing against capital expenditures for these semiconductor fabs. so we have to solve that problem because no no company without solving that problem is going to be able to compete globally. so there's a number of things we need to do to make it more conceivable for many of those industries to be reassured. and the key, i think, is to start very very specifically on those things that matter the most. and even that book, i have three big chapters of the policy that
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i we should take forward to really create this innovation acceleration that we're talking about. there's many, many things wrong. but i learned in business you can't fix everything at the same time. you to fix the things that matter most to begin to create the flywheel. everything else can happen. so these three chapters on on talent, technology and data are the flywheel to bring industry home and to create the environment. we can we can be more independent of of china, certainly, but also other. so i did i said, do you have a question for you? yeah. okay. and i'm happy to go with that. but my thank you for being here, you mentioned the importance of education. i'm just sort of curious how you think. thank you that we should draw the line between allowing parents an active voice in their children's education and allowing things like book banning which sort of strike me as a young person almost cartoonishly dystopian and evocative of ray bradbury, orwell, those types of books
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that all read as kids in school and certainly often on me. just curious to hear your thoughts. well, it's a it's a balancing act, obviously i think we could agree, or at least i certainly the evidence is clear that it's gone. the pendulum has swung very, very much in the wrong direction, very one sided view of history, a very one sided ideology that's by and large being promoted in our school system. and so how do we bring how we bring that back into balance and two things, obviously. one is let's get parents much more engaged in governance. let's let the governance process the answer to such questions and and ultimately, if the governance process elected school boards and so forth makes the choices i feel pretty good that that's going to land in an area that serves our our kids well. and then the second is choice because ultimately you can choose if school's teaching a certain set of things that you don't like and you can you can choose another and that choice is going to create discipline around the kinds of curriculum
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kinds of history, the kinds of topics that should be taught. and i'd put. you know, i'd put my confidence in the hands of parents, by and large, parents to govern the schools, parents to make the right choices. i think it's the only way it's to work. and i think we've we've lost that discipline and connectivity from parents to kids. so one thing i like to complete conclude these these sessions with is asking you if there's any like major point or something really wanted to say that you didn't get to say. sorry, i've got nothing left on the table. yeah. got one good point which is that, which was where the book ends. the book ends with, with in the last page or two with a great quote which is sort of at the core of the book and at the core of this audience, i suspect, which is, is this great ouimet buckley quote, which is about citizenship in his book gratitude. if you haven't read gratitude, you should read gratitude. pick it up. it's about national service, a number of other things. but he says citizenship is both privilege and a responsibility. it's privilege to live in the
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greatest country, in the world, a privilege to have all the things come with being american and. it's also a responsibility, responsible to preserve it responsibly, to keep it that way. and i think that's always been true. where at a moment where that responsibility is heightened. and so i know all of you are very actively interested in the future of the country, and that's certainly i wrote the book and why i ran for the senate. but if people don't step up, make it what it all can be, then the america we know won't be here. and so that's that's the final. thank you very much, david. thank you for writing the book and for being here. great book. thank
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